A third of Tasmania’s town water systems don’t meet national drinking water standards and residents in several towns have to queue at a communal tap. Why has the ‘clean, green’ state got such a problem with contaminated water? Ian Townsend investigates.

In the town of Ringarooma, in Tasmania’s picture-postcard northeast, mother of five Amber Jones makes her daily walk down to the town’s water tank with a five-litre plastic container.

‘It leaks all the way. I get home with about half,’ she says.

The town of 370 people has been told not to drink the town water supply because it’s contaminated with lead, so they have to make do with one tap at a communal tank behind the fire station.

‘When there's five drinking it, and then brushing your teeth, and you can imagine like the amount of veggies you have to boil for tea and stuff, we sort of go through a fair bit of water,’ Ms Jones says.

Ringarooma’s one of five towns in Tasmania’s northeast where the residents have been given tanks and told not to drink the water because of heavy metals.

‘You've got to be constantly saying to the kids, "Don't drink the water! Don't drink the water!"' says Ms Jones. ‘If they’re in the bath and they’re playing tea parties or something, and they are trying to drink it, you're like: "Don't drink the water!" Yeah, it’s pretty frustrating.’

Ben Lomond Water manages the town water schemes in Tasmania’s northeast. Acting CEO Andrew Beswick says a number of small town water supplies in the region have heavy metal issues, including Whitemark on Flinders Island, Pioneer and Ringarooma in the northeast, and Avoca in the Fingal Valley.

‘They're generally lead issues... lead concentrations in the water above Australian Drinking Water Guideline standards,’ Mr Beswick says. ‘Avoca also has a high cadmium level... We’re talking about in the order of two to four times the Australian Drinking Water Guideline standards.’

Listen to the full investigation on Background Briefing, Sunday 31 March at 8am, Tuesday 2 April at 2pm.

In fact, a third of Tasmania’s town water schemes do not meet Australian Drinking Water Guideline standards. Last year, nine towns recorded high levels of chemicals or metals. Twenty-two towns are on permanent Boil Water Alert. Another 13 towns were told to temporarily boil their water last year, because of high levels of bacteria.

‘Even before the heavy metal issue the risk was very even because of the number of these supplies [that] are not microbiologically sound, in that they have E. coli present so you have to remember to boil the water,’ Mr Beswick says.‘[I]t's not the standard of supply I think people would expect or deserve.’

Rob White, a Professor of Criminology at the University of Tasmania, has been studying the state’s contaminated towns.

‘We’re supposed to be living in a clean, green, pristine state, and what we're doing is boiling our water? Going to a communal water tank? Surely we've got to think down the track that there's got to be something wrong systemically that needs to be addressed.’

Professor White says a lot of the metal contamination is coming from old mines.

‘We have legacy waste. We have heavily, heavily polluted waters in some of our rivers and nothing substantial really is being done in some of these areas,’ he says.

‘We’re now giving the go-ahead to new projects without addressing the old ones, and so why should we trust that the new potential mining projects or forestry projects, which are already proven to contaminate the environment, why should we trust that those aren't going to have their own legacy impacts?'

The most serious legacy for drinking water in Tasmania appears to be lead, a neurotoxin that’s been linked to learning difficulties and behavioural problems in children.

There’s been increasing concern about the effect tiny amounts of lead has on the brains of young children, and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now say there is no safe level of lead in children.

In the town of Ringarooma, residents say they weren’t told about the lead in the bore water until three months after it appeared at high levels. The bore water had been turned off six weeks after high lead levels were found in late-August, but at the time no one was told why.

The residents are now worried that the lead might have been in the town bore on and off for years, because before 2009 no one was testing the water for heavy metals. It was only after Ben Lomond Water replaced the council water boards that testing for heavy metals started.

‘In Ringarooma, where the lead is in the bore supply, it may simply be from some change in geology in the mineralisation that is naturally in the ground in an area,’ Mr Beswick says. ‘We really do not know. In Avoca, the cadmium levels are coming, we believe, out of the sediment of the South Esk River, which has come down from the various creeks from mining operations that have occurred in the past.’

The link between the contamination and past mining is most obvious in the town of Royal George, also in Tasmania’s northeast, where three years ago the town’s drinking water source, the local river, was found to have arsenic 200 times the allowed drinking water standard and lead 50 times the standard.

Royal George has had its communal water tank for years now. Pat Thomas lives across the road from the tank, and says she’d like a better water supply, ‘where you could turn it on and get some nice pure water’ without worrying about toxic contaminants from mine tailings.

‘I don't think there's many places in Tasmania you can get that now,’ she says. ‘That's a thing of the past.'

Transcript

Ian Townsend: For the people of Ringarooma in Tasmania, the daily trek to get water is a fact of life they've had to get used to.

Amber Jones: This is the one they gave us. It'd be all right if you lived on your own and it didn't leak. Yes, one per family.

We've got five kids and then next door's got five kids and then the next door did have five kids, 15 kids in three houses.

Ian Townsend: And the more kids, the more frequent the trek.

Amber Jones: Not so good if you live all the way out the back of Ringarooma and have to trek in.

Ian Townsend: Looks like there is a queue.

Amber Jones: Oh, there is.

Ian Townsend: It's something you'd expect to see in a Third World country; people walking down to the single communal tap to get their water for drinking and cooking.

G'day. Filling up?

Woman: I'm not going to be on any TV thing am I?

Ian Townsend: No, no, it's radio, there's no pictures, it's okay. Where do you live in Ringarooma?

Woman: I'm not in Ringarooma, I'm 2.7 ks out.

Ian Townsend: That's a long way to come for your water.

Woman: It certainly is!

Ian Townsend: How often are you having to do this?

Woman: Twice a week I come in and get 22 litres of water.

Ian Townsend: Ringarooma, population 370, sits in a picture-postcard valley of Tasmania's north-east.

Like all the other residents here, Amber Jones has been given a five-litre plastic container to collect her daily water.

Amber Jones: If it leaks all the way I might get home with about half. But when there's five of us drinking it and then brushing your teeth in it and you can imagine the amount of veggies you have to boil for tea and stuff, we sort of go through a fair bit of water by the time we all brush our teeth in a clean cup of water.

Ian Townsend: Last December the people of Ringarooma were told their town water supply was contaminated with lead.

Amber Jones: You've got to be constantly going to the kids, 'Don't drink the water! Don't drink the water!' You know, they're in the bath and they're playing tea parties or something and they are trying to drink it and you're like, 'Don't drink the water!' It's pretty frustrating.

Ian Townsend: The town is one of several in Tasmania's north-east where levels of heavy metals have soared above the national limits.

Ben Lomond Water manages the town water schemes here, and its acting CEO is Andrew Beswick.

Andrew Beswick: We have heavy metal issues in a number of our small town water supplies and they are Whitemark on Flinders Island, Pioneer in the north-east, Ringarooma also in the north-east, and Avoca in the Fingal Valley.

Ian Townsend: What issues are they?

Andrew Beswick: They're generally lead issues that are lead concentrations in the water above Australian Drinking Water Guidelines standards, and Avoca also has a cadmium level.

Ian Townsend: Can you tell me what sort of levels we're talking about?

Andrew Beswick: We're talking about in the order of two to four times the Australian Drinking Water Guidelines standards

Ian Townsend: A third of Tasmania's town water schemes don't meet Australian Drinking Water Guidelines standards.

Hello, I'm Ian Townsend and welcome to Background Briefing on RN.

Of more than 90 town water schemes in Tasmania, nine have high levels of chemicals or metals, 22 towns are on a permanent 'boil water' alert, and last year another 13 were told they had to boil their water to kill the bacteria.

Andrew Beswick from Ben Lomond Water:

Andrew Beswick: Even before the heavy metal issue, the risk was there even because of the number of these supplies are not microbiologically sound in that they have E. coli present, so you had to remember to boil the water.

Ian Townsend: It sounds very Third World though.

Andrew Beswick: Well, it's not the standard of supply I think people would expect or deserve.

Rob White: Hang on, what's going on here? We're supposed to be living in a clean, green, pristine state and what we're doing is boiling our water? Going to a communal water tank? Surely we've got to think down the track that there's got to be something wrong, systemically, that needs to be addressed.

Ian Townsend: Rob White is a Professor of Criminology at the University of Tasmania and he's been studying the state's contaminated towns.

Rob White: The initial response on the part of health authorities and government generally will be to get people to boil their water. And it just seems to me that very often the response in fact is to get the consumer and members of the community to change their behaviour and to deal with the problem at their end rather than actually going back to the source of the problem or the cause of the problem. So in a sense the easy way out is to basically shift the responsibility to the consumer or the citizen rather than governments and/or companies taking responsibility to deal with the cause and the source of the problem to begin with.

Ian Townsend: Three years ago, the old council water boards in Tasmania's north-east were replaced by one big regional authority, Ben Lomond Water, which started testing for heavy metals. Last year the testing showed lead levels in Ringarooma soaring above the guidelines.

Lead's a neurotoxin that's particularly dangerous to children. Amber Jones has raised her five children in the town believing that the tap water was safe.

Ian Townsend: It must be a great concern about your kids. Having read what you've read on the internet, presumably you know the dangers.

Amber Jones: Yes, behavioural disorders, learning disorders, and that's off the top of my head that I can think of. You're trying to do the right things by your kids and you don't want to be exposing them to that sort of stuff.

Ian Townsend: New research is showing that children exposed to even tiny amounts of lead are more likely to have long-term learning difficulties and behavioural problems such as ADHD.

The United States Centers for Disease Control now says there's no safe level for lead in children. In the US, the public has to be notified if there's more than five micrograms a litre of lead in drinking water at its source, such as a bore.

In Australia, the drinking water intervention level is ten micrograms per litre. Last August, the Ringarooma bore recorded 18.6 micrograms a litre, nearly twice the Australian standard and four times the American source-water alert level. The town residents weren't told for another three months.

The manager of environmental health at Tasmania's Department of Health and Human Services is Stuart Heggie.

Stuart Heggie: Once we became aware of the lead levels in the water we issued a public health alert to stop people being exposed to more lead.

Ian Townsend: The lead was recorded in the Ringarooma town bore in August and the residents weren't notified until late November or early December, so that's about three months after the lead was found.

Stuart Heggie: Well, I don't have the exact months in front of me but what is normal practice is you get a detection and if it's above the drinking water guidelines level then you immediately take a second sample to see whether or not the lead level was actually a true indicator of what's in the water. The samples themselves can take up to three weeks to get a result, and then we then have a conversation with the water corporations to find out what they have been doing or intend to do, and then if we think that that's not going to necessarily resolve the situation immediately then we will issue the public health alert.

Ian Townsend: That all takes time, and the official alert didn't go out until mid-December. People had been drinking the lead in the water for six weeks before the contaminated bore water was turned off, and in that time it had peaked at more than five times the Australian drinking water standard. That's considered a dangerous level for children.

Dr Marc Edwards is Professor of Civil Engineering at Virginia Tech in the US, and an expert in lead contamination in drinking water. He's on a cell phone from his home in Virginia.

Marc Edwards: Well, there's no safe level of lead, and certainly the World Health Organisation and the US Centers for Disease Control recommend that you never drink water with more than ten micrograms per parts per billion lead in it. For young children the US EPA used to identify levels of lead over 40 parts per billion as posing an imminent and substantial endangerment to women and children.

Ian Townsend: The lead level recorded at Ringarooma was higher than the level considered in the US to be an imminent and substantial danger to children. Marc Edwards has seen the readings from the Ringarooma bore and he points out that in the US the testing for lead is usually done at the kitchen tap.

Marc Edwards: The EPA warnings at about 40 parts per billion are for first-draw water which is after this water sits in a home plumbing system and has a chance to pick up even more lead. And the EPA assumption is that even in those cases after 30 seconds of flushing, lead levels will go much lower. So the very serious danger in this case is that lead levels were high for extended periods of time and would not have been reduced by flushing as they are in the normal case.

Ian Townsend: In other words, if the lead is in the water bore it's an even bigger problem, because the water can pick up more lead as it passes through old household plumbing.

The fact that people were allowed to drink the water for weeks after high lead levels were first found alarms local GP, Alison Bleaney, who lives at nearby St Helens. She's also a member of the Tasmanian Public and Environmental Health Network.

Alison Bleaney: We know that lead is a nasty heavy metal to have in your drinking water. Chronic ingestion, even of low levels, can cause really adverse effects, neurodevelopment, behaviour across multiple systems, especially very small children, unborn babies, and the legacy lasts for a long time, for decades. So the thing is, if we know this, why would you actually not try and make people's drinking water as safe as you possibly can?

Ian Townsend: It wasn't until the town water supply was switched from the bore to an old dam in October that people started asking questions. The dam water was muddy, and the residents didn't like the look of it, so the water authority agreed to switch the town supply back to the bore, but warned them not to drink it because of the lead.

As soon as she heard about the lead, Amber Jones went onto the internet.

Amber Jones: Well, when I found out that the lead was in the water I googled and just did a bit of reading on the effects of lead and stuff, and from what I can tell it's nothing that we'll know straightaway, it's sort of more 20 years down the track we'll find out if there was any effects or not.

Ian Townsend: Have the kids had any blood tests?

Amber Jones: No. As far as I know there's been a few people in the area who've had blood tests but I haven't given my kids blood tests, no.

Ian Townsend: You weren't told to or was it recommended that you do?

Amber Jones: No it wasn't recommended. Ben Lomond have been very sketchy, you know, kind of very protective of what they say.

Ian Townsend: Have they told you where the lead might be coming from?

Amber Jones: No, not that I'm aware of.

Ian Townsend: Andrew Beswick from Ben Lomond Water says it's still unclear why the lead's in the water supply, not just in Ringarooma but in the other towns like Pioneer and Avoca.

Andrew Beswick: In Ringarooma where the lead is actually in a bore supply it may simply be from some change in geology in the mineralisation that is naturally in the ground in that area, but we really do not know. In Avoca the cadmium levels are coming we believe out of the sediments of the South Esk River which has come down from the various creeks from mining operations that have occurred in the past.

Ian Townsend: Avoca is an hour or so drive from Ringarooma, over the hills where there's been a lot of tin mining in the past. Avoca gets its drinking water from the South Esk River and in 2011 that water was found to have high levels of lead and cadmium.

In the town's main street people are walking their dogs and collecting the morning mail from the local post office. The post office is across the road from the hall, where again there's a communal water tank.

Besides Dino the dog, I'm in the post office with Shirley and Yvonne.

You go and get your water from the tank?

Yvonne: Yep, sure do, yes. I walk from there down to the hall and back.

Ian Townsend: How long does that take?

Yvonne: Oh five or ten minutes, but you try carrying two five-litre bottles at a time…it gets heavy.

Ian Townsend: How long have you been doing that?

Yvonne: How long has it been there, Shirl? Yeah, before Christmas.

Ian Townsend: Was it a shock to find those levels of metals in the water?

Yvonne: Yes, because I drink a lot of water.

Ian Townsend: How long have you been drinking the water here?

Yvonne: Years. Born and bred here.

Ian Townsend: At Avoca, everyone assumes that the contamination is coming down from old tin mines upstream.

Shirley: I mean, we probably knew that there was something there but not as bad as perhaps it is now.

Ian Townsend: Why do you think there might have been something there? Were you aware of the problem?

Shirley: Well, the mines have always been there, and some years ago there was quite a big flood, washed the metals from the mine and it ruined a property for growing crops, and it's just continually coming down the creek every time there's a decent flood.

Ian Townsend: There are actually two mines upstream on two different creeks, and they both meet at Doug Loane's farm, a short drive up the river valley.

Doug Loane raises cattle and grows poppies and fennel here. Although the contaminated creeks run past his house, he gets his drinking water from a different creek, a bit further up the valley.

Doug Loane: It's actually another creek up the back of the farm which is nowhere near the mine.

Ian Townsend: So this is creek water?

Doug Loane: It's creek water. Beautiful.

Ian Townsend: It's what water should taste like, isn't it.

Doug Loane: It's just naturally clean, it's not filtered, and there's no industry or farming on that particular creek, so it's straight off the front of the mountain.

There's two creeks that meet here, that's the Storys Creek mine, you know, 100+ years mining.

Ian Townsend: So is that Storys Creek?

Doug Loane: That's Storys Creek there and this is Aberfoyle Creek which came past the Rossarden mine but they meet here. As you can see, there's more silt and degradation in the Storys Creek.

Ian Townsend: And are there heavy metals in both these creeks?

Doug Loane: Heavy metals in both—cadmium lead, manganese, zinc—they tend to be the ones they measure. So generally speaking, if we're just talking cadmium and lead, Storys Creek is five- to ten-fold worse then the Aberfoyle, just in terms of levels. So these levels change over time but it's certainly more polluted, and the reason for that was that the mine was literally in the creek, and when they started tin mining they literally turned the creek over and started mining in the creek. And then they went into the hills basically from the creek, and acid mine drainage, tailings et cetera were literally right beside the creek.

Ian Townsend: And they're still leaching out constantly?

Doug Loane: Well, they are.

Ian Townsend: The Tasmanian Public and Environmental Health Network has a list of more than 40 rivers and creeks it says are contaminated with heavy metals from mining. There's a link on the Background Briefing website.

Rob White from the University of Tasmania:

Rob White: We have legacy waste, we have heavily, heavily polluted waters in some of our rivers, and nothing substantial really is being done in some of these areas. We're now giving the go-ahead to new projects without addressing the old ones, and so why should we trust that the new potential mining projects or the forestry projects which are already proven to contaminate environments, why should we trust that those aren't going to have their own legacy impacts?

Ian Townsend: Mining is still big business in Tasmania's north, but like logging, it grates against the state's clean, green image that we hear a lot about. With an unemployment rate over 7% though, Tasmania needs jobs and there are plans to expand mining in an area known as the Tarkine in the state's north-west.

Last month, the Federal Government denied nearly all of the Tarkine a place on the Australian Heritage Register. On the edge of the Tarkine is the 100-year-old Rosebery mine. The town of Rosebery's been at the centre of a dispute over how much the heavy metals from mining has affected the health of people in the town.

Dr Alison Bleaney:

Alison Bleaney: The reality is that many of these people are really quite sick, quite vague sicknesses, you know, gastrointestinal, liver, thyroid, skin, increased incidence of cancer, increased incidence of endocrine diseases, thyroid diseases. Whether this is significant of course is debated.

Ian Townsend: When you've got heavy metals in dust, water and soil near a town and people are ill, it's very hard to say if that contamination caused the illness, especially if we're talking about towns with only a few hundred people.

It's easier to see what the heavy metal pollution from old mines has done to the health of the local rivers though, and that's the reason Federal Environment Minister Tony Burke gave for not putting most of the Tarkine region on the Australian Heritage List.

Tony Burke: There was no way you'd find significant environmental values in some of the sites that I visited, areas of previous mining activity where rehabilitation hadn't been done well, poisonous leaching was still going in and killing rivers for kilometres.

Ian Townsend: Old mines can be weeping sores. Dig a hole in an area rich with minerals and you can start chemical reactions. Rain dissolves minerals that can turn the water acidic, dissolving metals in the exposed rock and dirt. That contaminated water is called 'acid mine drainage' and it can keep oozing into streams and rivers for decades.

There's a good example of it in Tasmania's north-east, right next to a town called Royal George. The tailings of an old tin mine have been dumped on a slope above the town. Three years ago, the Tasmanian Health and Human Services Department tested the town's drinking water supply, the St Paul's River, and found arsenic 200 times the drinking water limit, and lead 50 times the limit.

The residents were told to stop drinking the river water and a communal tank was put next to the hall. It's a small town, only a dozen or so homes beside a narrow country road near the river.

When Background Briefing visited, it was an unusually hot autumn day, and Pat Thomas was inside with the windows and doors closed to keep the house cool. Outside it was 34 degrees and Pat would have liked to have taken her dogs for a swim in the river, when it cooled down.

Pat Thomas: We used to swim and take the dogs down and swim in it and everything. They don't get to swim anymore.

Ian Townsend: What was the problem, did they say, with the water down there?

Pat Thomas: Oh I think it's coming from the mine up the top, I reckon it's coming down over the hill, and that's what they tell us, but I reckon they could be right there, they might be telling the truth.

Ian Townsend: What have they told you in the past about the tailings over here and the mine and what effect that might have had on the town?

Pat Thomas: They reckon that's what it is, the tailings from the mine, and I don't know what they've done because since I've been crook I haven't been up the road, I don't know what they've fenced in and what they have done and what they haven't done up there because I've been crook for a couple of years, so…

Ian Townsend: If I might ask, what's the matter?

Pat Thomas: I had a cyst on the brain that's all, it was nothing big, but it was big enough.

Ian Townsend: Better now?

Pat Thomas: No, it's not, I don't think it ever gets better. No, it's a lot better than it was. I didn't even know I had it until the doctor found it.

Ian Townsend: These towns are so small, it's hard to say whether any health problems here could be linked to the water. In any case, Pat Thomas doesn't like to complain.

Ian Townsend: Would you like to have a better water supply or are you happy with what you've got?

Pat Thomas: Oh I love the better water supply where you could turn it on and get some nice pure water. I don't think there's many places in Tasmania you can get that now though, that's a thing of the past.

Ian Townsend: As we've heard, there are four other towns in Tasmania's north-east where you now can't drink the water from the kitchen tap at all because of lead and, in one case, cadmium. They're the towns of Whitemark on Flinders Island, Avoca, Pioneer and Ringarooma.

Last December, the 370 people in Ringarooma were sent letters telling them that lead above the Australian drinking water standard had been found in the town's bore.

Amber Jones was pregnant at the time with her fifth child.

Amber Jones: We got a letter box drop saying that we weren't to drink the water anymore, they'd detected high levels of lead and that you couldn't drink it. That was the first we'd heard of it.

Ian Townsend: And you've got how many children?

Amber Jones: Five

Ian Townsend: How old are they?

Amber Jones: The oldest is about to turn nine and the youngest is eight weeks.

Ian Townsend: And they've all lived here, they were born here?

Amber Jones: Yes, all born here, lived here.

Ian Townsend: And drinking the water?

Amber Jones: Yeah, they have. Up until we were told not to they were sort of drinking it sporadically, either boiled or straight out of the tap or through the purifier which if it's got lead in it doesn't really matter anyway.

Ian Townsend: And you weren't aware..?

Amber Jones: No, God no.

Ian Townsend: How does that make you feel?

Amber Jones: Pretty horrified, to be honest. You know, it's not very nice when that's something that's out of your control and you're living your kids drink water thinking it's okay and then to find out it's not…

Ian Townsend: Last August, months before Amber Jones found out about the lead, the town bore had its first high reading. We've put the test results for Ringarooma on the Background Briefing website. Remember, the Australia Drinking Water Guidelines say there shouldn't be more than ten micrograms per litre of lead in water.

Tasmania's environmental health manager, Stuart Heggie:

Stuart Heggie: There is a significant safety factor built into this limit as well, so I would be more concerned if the levels we were finding were in the hundreds, if you like.

Ian Townsend: Well, there was a reading in the hundreds from Ringarooma, in the 190s from one test from the bore. The people weren't drinking from the bore at the time, but that would suggest that the potential for the bore is that it could produce lead at that level. So in the past for production of lead at that level in the drinking water would be of great concern, wouldn't it?

Stuart Heggie: Yes, I mean, I still maintain that if people are concerned about their blood leads, the only way to establish that would be for the people to visit their GP.

Ian Townsend: The town bore was turned off on October the 18th. The alert for the lead wasn't issued until eight weeks after that, in December. It was only then that some people went for blood tests. Lead has a half-life in the blood of four to five weeks, so if anyone did have high blood lead levels in October, they'd probably be under the limit by December and that wouldn't be reported to the Health Department.

The discovery by the Tasmanian Health Department that none of the residents in Ringarooma had high blood lead levels in December says nothing about what their blood lead level was months or years earlier.

Tasmania's director of environmental health, Stuart Heggie again:

Stuart Heggie: Well, you would expect to still see some lead in their blood if it was as high as perhaps you're suggesting, and that would get picked up in a blood test if they were to have one, and that's why we think it would be a good idea for those people who suspect that they may have got an excessive intake of lead over the those years to go and visit their GP and find out for sure.

Ian Townsend: But you're only getting the tests back if they're over ten and perhaps there are elevated levels or levels below ten but over five that would suggest some exposure to lead in the past and you wouldn't know.

Stuart Heggie: Yes, you're right, we won't know officially.

Ian Townsend: If any children did have high blood lead levels in Ringarooma, we'll never know. Lead in the blood is measured in micrograms per decilitre and the US has now halved what's called the reference blood lead level from ten micrograms per decilitre to five, to identify children exposed to lead and help them. Australia is still to act.

Dr Alison Bleaney:

Alison Bleaney: You know, most of the rest of the world, First World, is attempting to keep lead levels at that. Why would Australia be different? Why would Tasmania be different? Why would there be small pockets of population for which the government is responsible that it seems like they don't actually care? I don't actually understand that. Or maybe it's small populations out of sight, out of mind.

Ian Townsend: Ringarooma is a small town but it has a high proportion of young families. School has just finished and the kids are at the local pool, where the water has also been trucked in, and they're walking across the road to buy lollies.

David Shaw moved from Adelaide six years ago and took over the local post office and shop. Like many people here, he moved his family for a better life because of Tasmania's reputation as a clean, green state. The housing's cheap and it's a really nice town to live in, apart from the water supply.

David Shaw has formed a committee of residents to try to get to the bottom of the town's water problems, which he learned only recently aren't just confined to lead.

David Shaw: It's very alarming because if you take out of the whole northern part of Tasmania when before we found there was lead in it they said that there was 23 towns on a permanent boil water alert. Eleven of them are in Dorset Council, so that's here Ringarooma, Derby, Branxholme, Winnaleah, Pioneer, all these places are all on a permanent boil water alert. Nobody knew about it, nobody was told.

Ian Townsend: It was on a permanent boil water alert but nobody was alerted.

David Shaw: No, exactly. There was nothing on your water bill, there was nothing on your water accounts, and even when Ben Lomond took over it wasn't until two bills ago that they actually put it was a boil water alert. They've now changed it now to this is a non-potable water supply, do not drink.

Ian Townsend: Ben Lomond Water is now looking for alternative water supplies, but it'd cost a fortune to give Ringarooma and the other contaminated towns clean water at the kitchen tap.

From Ben Lomond Water, Andrew Beswick.

Andrew Beswick: We haven't been doing necessarily much research in the source of the contamination. We don't see much likelihood that will be able to stop the contamination in the short term or in any way that we could afford to do and, as I said, it's not necessarily our role to do that. But I think our better alternative is to try to identify an alternate water source where possible or an alternate method of delivering a reliable water supply. I think it's more for the state or federal government to deal with the broader issue.

Ian Townsend: Royal George has had a communal water tank now for three years, and finding a reliable water supply there doesn't seem to be on anyone's agenda.

Andrew Beswick again:

Andrew Beswick: It's not a town that we supply to as a reticulated supply.

Ian Townsend: It's not in your district?

Andrew Beswick: It is in our district but it's not one that has a reticulated supply that we are responsible for.

Ian Townsend: But if it had a pipe coming out of the river..?

Andrew Beswick: Oh look, there are systems in Tasmania that are private schemes and various other arrangements but they're not necessarily part of the Water Authority's responsibility and it's not part of our responsibility, as I understand it.

Ian Townsend: Should it be, do you think?

Andrew Beswick: It's a very small scheme and I think that's why it has never been part of our systems, and as it is we have schemes with as few as about 30 connections, so we're talking very small schemes that even we control, so this must be a very small scheme.

Ian Townsend: It's a very small scheme, right next to the polluted tailings of an old tin mine. It's a short walk from the town through the scrub up to the tailings. You can see where the tailings have been bulldozed to slow erosion. Parts of the site are fenced to help a metal-tolerant species of grass grow. The area's still dusty, and colourful traces of heavy metals still show through the bare earth.

Mineral Resources Tasmania has a mine rehabilitation trust fund, but last financial year it had only $150,000 to spend. $65,000 was spent here at Royal George, and another $52,000 will be spent this year. A description of what's being done to fix the tailings at Royal George is on the Background Briefing website, as is a list of other mine rehabilitation projects in Tasmania.

About ten kilometres downstream from Royal George, Dennis Nicholls has an eco-tourism business. He rents out cabins to fishermen. The metals wouldn't be in the water this far downstream, he says, but not enough's being done to give him or tourists peace of mind.

Dennis Nicholls: In fairness to them they've been doing quite a bit of substantial work and I know that they do check the water in the town area, but monitoring it in one spot or two or three spots is not good enough. They really need to go a bit further and give people the confidence that the waters are pristine clear. People in Tasmania need that.

Ian Townsend: As an ecotourism operator what's your main concern?

Dennis Nicholls: Well, that is my main concern, the water quality. We have no pollution problems apart from that. As far as the water is concerned, if they just be mindful of the fact that we're trying to promote this place as a green, clean place. It's not giving me the perception that they're doing enough.

Ian Townsend: Back in Ringarooma, the residents have been given a choice. If they don't want lead in their water, they'll have to use the water from the old dam. When the bore water was switched to the dam last October, the residents weren't told why, and complained that their water was so dirty they couldn't do their washing. It's that dam, which has been cleaned out, that will now supply the town's drinking water.

Meantime, Jill Rowbottom is at the communal water tank.

Jill Rowbottom: I think perhaps we'd be better off to try the dam water and put up with the E. coli. At least you can boil your water and get the E. coli germs out.

Ian Townsend: So the choice is between E. coli or lead. What's your poison?

Jill Rowbottom: The E. coli I reckon!

Amber Jones: Most people would prefer the E. coli, apart from a couple of oldies who like to keep their whites white.

Jill Rowbottom: Yes, possibly, yes.

Amber Jones: They want the bore water because otherwise their whites are getting too dirty.

Ian Townsend: Regardless of where we live, we all need clean drinking water. The reality is that bigger towns and cities often have better water than smaller country towns.

GP Alison Bleaney says that's no excuse for ignoring the health concerns of the people who live in those towns.

Alison Bleaney: You know, if you've got 20 people complaining, that's one thing. If you have 500,000 people complaining, my goodness, we have a problem. But you can basically just tell 20 people they don't know what they're talking about. So what action is anyone going to take?

Ian Townsend: I asked Andrew Beswick from Ben Lomond Water if the smaller towns were being discriminated against when it came to their drinking water.

Andrew Beswick: I like to see it as a glass half-full perspective and that is they've now got focus and are being addressed. Until our formation there was some action occurring but at a very slow rise, and that has now become accelerated with the program of works we are already doing. We're now addressing what the long-term options are for these remaining towns, so at least they will have a pathway forward and it's an acceleration of what would have otherwise occurred, a massive acceleration in fact.

Ian Townsend: It's not accelerating fast enough for Amber Jones and her five children at Ringarooma.

Amber Jones: Long-term I'm worried because there's nothing in the pipeline to improve our water supply. At the moment this is just a temporary fix. You know, clean the dam out so that they can use that as a supply, but you're still not going to be able to drink it, it's still going to be on a permanent boil water alert, so it's still going to taste like rubbish.

Ian Townsend: Water treatment works can cost millions of dollars and some of these small towns have only a few dozen to a few hundred people.

It's even more expensive to fix mines to stop them contaminating water supplies in the first place. We heard earlier about what's happening at Royal George and a $150,000 trust fund for mine rehabilitation in Tasmania. That's a drop in the ocean. In February, Background Briefing looked at the toxic legacy of the Mt Morgan gold mine in Queensland, and the $200 million needed to fix just that one mine.

Mining companies and governments are more rigorous these days about stopping pollution, but it still happens. Two weeks ago there was a major spill of tailings from the Savage River mine in Tasmania's north-west.

The contamination of towns from the old mines in Tasmania's north-east is a warning to be careful that whatever economic benefits we get from mining today could be wiped out by the legacy of heavy metal contamination in the future.

Rob White:

Rob White: We're in a situation now where we do know much more about lead, about arsenic, about mercury, about a wide range of substances and chemicals, and we need to take pre-emptive action to stop the harms that will inevitably come down the track.

If we don't address the substantive and huge potential costs associated with some of our mining projects, for example, and we only think of the economic benefits, then we are all going to pay much, much more down track.